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Author
Topic: Forum/Aidsmeds Suggestions for Mods (Read 3031 times)

There was a thread in the old forums that had suggestions for the site. I have a few more (mainly about the new forums):

1. Why does the entire thread stay on a single page? Can there be a limit to how many responses or the size of a page, with clickable links to other pages as a thread grows?

2. Is there a way to include a max on the size of a photo to be pasted inside a message (and then a removal of the soft ban on images)? Attachments are okay, but if you want a pic to make a specific point at a specific place in your message, the attachment feature isn't as useful. Can you even have a fix installed that will automatically re-size/shape the photo to fit within the guidelines?

3. Improve the buddy feature. Maybe the buddy feature could not only bold the person's name (which I find useless), but also have it point out there postings or highlight their postings as you comb through the forums.

4. I don't like that the forums show who is viewing which boards and topics. It seems like an invasion of privacy (okay maybe an overstatement).

5. Maybe this is available but for those who use Google Talk (as opposed to Yahoo and MSN), can there be a link to Google talk profiles?

6. We should be able to ignore both members and threads. In the previous forum, if you had a member on ignore, you could still see movements in their threads but it wouldn't read very well cause of blocking of various messages. That tempts you into unblocking the member. Maybe if you could ignore the thread too that would reduce that temptation.

8. Where’s the new (and much improved, I hope) chat room?

9. Color options please! This dull blue, gray combination is making the voices inside my head tell me to kill someone. Save a life and allow us to change the color schemes, please.

10. We should be able to recall PMs that haven't been reviewed by the member yet. For those times when you send something but change your mind.

1. The forum was originally set to only show something like 20 responses per page, but it was changed to 100 when someone mentioned in the Testing Forum about having to click through pages. Maybe we can have a happy medium of 50?

2. There already is a limit on picture size but I don't know if this can be reduced. The "soft ban" on embedded pictures is only for information based threads and how often would a picture be useful in one of those anyway? In cases where one might, an attachment should suffice. This "soft ban" is in place to enable dial-up users to access information without having to wait ages for a thread to download because someone decided to post a funny pic to the thread. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but a guideline put in place as a courtesy to our dial-up members.

3. Um, I don't know and can't comment.

4. You can always view topics while not logged in. If you wish to reply, it is very simple with this software to log in on the page you want to reply to and log back out again. I don't know if this can be changed.

5. Again, I don't know and can't comment. I didn't know there was such a thing as Google Talk.

6 - 9... technical points that will have to go to Peter, like 3 & 5.

10. PMs are a bit like emails. You need to make sure you want to say what you've said BEFORE you hit send.

My comments are just that, my comments and my own personal take on the subjects you raise, Cliff. I wanted to make that clear.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

I do not have any suggestions for improvement really but just wanted to say that overall I like the new forum, especially the spell checker! Thanks for all the hard work you guys do. This thing could be two tin cans and a piece of string and it would still be far better than what I had before which was nothing.

Logged

44 year old gay man .......just broke up with the only man I've ever really loved.

Here's a link to Google Talk. http://www.google.com/talk/ The good feature about it is that you can make voice calls (for free) to other Google Talk members. I think they all do that now, but I have never tried it on anything but Google.

Quote

The forum was originally set to only show something like 20 responses per page, but it was changed to 100 when someone mentioned in the Testing Forum about having to click through pages. Maybe we can have a happy medium of 50?

50 seems like a happy medium. Sometimes I have to access the website from dial-up (at a client site that refuse to let me on their network) and it takes a while to download the popular threads because there are so many responses on the page (I didn't even know there was a 100 limit, I guess we haven't had any reach that level yet, at least not any I've seen).

Quote

There already is a limit on picture size but I don't know if this can be reduced. The "soft ban" on embedded pictures is only for information based threads and how often would a picture be useful in one of those anyway? In cases where one might, an attachment should suffice. This "soft ban" is in place to enable dial-up users to access information without having to wait ages for a thread to download because someone decided to post a funny pic to the thread. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but a guideline put in place as a courtesy to our dial-up members.

If you attach a photo does it take up space on the server? When I include photos in my messages it's usually just a link to the site where the photo is housed and so I assume that is more efficient (cost effective) for the forums (though still instrusive for dial-up folks).

This "soft ban" is in place to enable dial-up users to access information without having to wait ages for a thread to download because someone decided to post a funny pic to the thread. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but a guideline put in place as a courtesy to our dial-up members.

Hello Ann,

And I should say that it is working very well. I am on dial-up, and the threads are loading very fast. My connection speed is almost always 45.3 KBS

It's working great, But I am still trying to figure everything out--------Ray

My biggest peeve on here is that the back button does not return you to the thread you were on last. You always end up back at the top of the page.This to me is frustrating and is making this forum difficult to use.I would like to see it leave you back to the thread you were on so you don't have to constantly scroll down the page.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. Unfortunately, the forums are going to stay "as is" for a while at least. Our programmers have their plates full with attempting to move each section of AIDSmeds.com (the lessons, the drug pages, Graph My Labs, Check My Meds, the blogs, etc.) over to the POZ servers (AIDSmeds was on a Windows server, and POZ uses Linux servers, so the transfers are very complex).

I also don't want to start rewriting the new forums software code until SMF (our new forums software) releases their final version 1.1 (we're using a pre-release version at this time).

Maybe near the end of 2006, after everyone is used to the new software, we can all start discussing possible custom rewrites to improve things.

I'm sorry for this situation, but believe it or not, we're in a better situation that we used to be. I didn't upgrade the old forums for YEARS (except for adding the user banning feature), because I didn't have the resources or programming staff (just freelancers). Once AIDSmeds is moved and working well on the Linux servers, we can start exploring other options.

Thanks for the update. Sometimes it's easy to forget that life doesn't run in a vaccum, (i.e., other issues you guys have to worry about).

I agree with Rocky, you guys have done one heck of job with this thing, (especially with the timing of the merger). It's easy to sit on the outside and demand, demand, demand...so my hats off to you guys.

Cliff- Who needs to find a way to tell those voices that unfortunately the blue/gray combo stays. They won't be happy, but they'll live. They always do.

I find it quite useful to check before logging off or going to do something else to see if somebody is reading or responding to particular threads at the moment, especially if theire is an ongoing discourse